জামদানি কেন ইউনেস্কোর ঐতিহ্য?

In 2013 UNESCO inscribed "the traditional art of Jamdani weaving" on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The listing recognises a skill, not an object: the technique of adding motifs by hand on the loom, passed from master to apprentice, mostly in the weaving villages of Narayanganj.

It is called intangible because it lives in the weavers' hands and memory. The motifs have names and are handed down; the patience it takes cannot be written in a manual. The listing is also a warning — crafts like this disappear when the people who hold them cannot earn a living from them.

Buying a hand-woven Jamdani from a shop that buys from the weavers is the most direct way anyone outside the villages keeps the craft alive.